Deborah, you have been randomly chosen to win a copy of Carolyn Jewel’s book Scandal. Just email your info to riskies@yahoo.com to claim your prize!
Deborah, you have been randomly chosen to win a copy of Carolyn Jewel’s book Scandal. Just email your info to riskies@yahoo.com to claim your prize!
Today, of course, is February 14, Valentine’s Day! The Big V-Day. The day of pink and red, of flowers and chocolates. The day of over-priced “special menus” in restaurants, served by surly waiters who definitely don’t want to be there helping you make the day Very Special. But the flowers and chocolates (and champagne!) make that okay…
Speaking of flowers, I have a very cute old book that belonged to my grandmother about the “language of flowers.” Floriography (a means of communication in which various flowers and floral arrangements were used to send coded messages) was especially popular with the Victorians, who loved all things sentimental. But this idea goes back to antiquity, and was well-known in Medieval and Renaissance art (all those saints with their symbolic blossoms). So, I took out this book and tried to put together bouquets for various romantic couples. Here’s what I came up with…
Emma and Mr. Knightley
Arbor vitae (everlasting friendship); Daffodil (chivalry, respect, uncertainty); Gorse (love in all seasons); Heliotrope (devotion); Honeysuckle (devoted affection); Lavender-colored roses (love at first sight–literally in their case); Lavender (devotion)
Elizabeth B. and Mr. Darcy
Buttercup (riches); Mint (suspicion); Oats (music); Blue poppies (mystery, attaining the impossible); Red tulips (declaration of love); Light pink roses (desire, passion, joy of life); Wheat (wealth and prosperity)
Cathy and Heathcliff
Amaranth (immortal love); Bird’s foot trefoil (revenge); Lobelia (malevolence); Mallow (consumed by love); Marigold (pain and grief); Love lies bleeding (hopelessness); Black poppy (death, hatred, farewell); anemone (forsaken, sickness). Wow, they sound like they’d be fun on Valentine’s Day…
Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester
Acacia (secret, chaste love); Purple carnations (my heart aches for you); Oak leaf (strength), Oxeye daisy (patience); White poppy (consolation); Eglantine rose (a wound to heal); Elderflower (compassion); Snowdrop (consolation or hope); Blue and white violets (faithfulness/modesty)
Catherine Morland and Mr. Tilney
Purple and white lilacs (first love/youthful innocence); Mullein (good nature); Cherry blossom (a good education); Forget-me-not (true love); Red and yellow mixed roses (joy, happiness, excitement)
What are your plans for Valentine’s Day? Any favorite romantic couples you’d like to send flowers to? And hey, what are your own favorite flowers? (I love pink roses and gardenias…)
This Friday, we have a special interview with Carolyn Jewel, whose new book, Scandal, is released this week. Scandal has already gotten some stellar reviews:
Dear Author gave it an A-; Romance Novel TV gave it “5++++++++++” stars, saying, “WOW. Simply, wow. That is the only word I can use to describe this masterpiece. It has been such a long time since I have read such a rich, emotional and tension filled romance.”
Carolyn lives in Northern California with her son, three cats, a border collie, several chickens, some sheep and various strays and other rescued critters. In addition to writing luscious historicals, Carolyn writes edgy paranormals, with her next book, My Forbidden Desire, coming out in May. Megan is honored to have Carolyn as a faux critique partner, and even more thrilled that she was able to help, in some small way, with Scandal‘s brilliance.
Carolyn took some time out from basking in the glow of excellent reviews to answer a few questions. Comment on the interview to win a copy of signed copy of Scandal, the winner chosen randomly by the Riskies.
Q. Tell us about this book—its characters, setting, etc.
Scandal is set during England’s Regency era and takes place in the countryside and London. It’s the story of a young woman who marries unwisely and pays a fairly severe price for her love.
Lord Banallt is a rake who behaves very badly with Sophie. They’re both married, and although Sophie would never, ever be unfaithful to her husband, Banallt has no such scruples. By the time he realizes he’s in love with her, it’s too late. She’s convinced, with good reason, that he is irredeemable.
Two years later they have both lost their spouses and Banallt sets out to prove that he really has changed. And he has. It’s a genuine transformation for him. Convincing Sophie of that is the challenge.
Q. How long did it take? Was this an easy or difficult book to write?
It took Banallt the entire book to convince Sophie he’d changed – oh. You mean how long it took to write the book?
I wrote at least two very different versions of this book, one of which was probably okay, the other one(s) was/were pretty awful. My agent read the opening chapters of sucky version 10.5 and advised me to start over. So I did. Scandal underwent its own transformation to a version that was truer to the original version, but much, much better. My fabulous agent sold it shortly after I resubmitted the proposal, and I wrote the rest of it in about four months, and spend the last two absolutely convinced there was no way I’d ever finish on time.
So far every single book I’ve ever written has been difficult. All of them. I don’t foresee that changing.
Q. Did you run across anything new and unusual while researching this book?
In a way, I did the opposite. Rather than research for the book specifically, I drew on research that I did in graduate school (in 2005/6 I believe) when I chose Regency Era author Eleanor Sleath as a project subject for my academic research course. Our assignment was to find everything EVER written about our subject. The trick then, was to pick someone who wasn’t too famous, because then you’d never be able to track down everything, and yet find someone who wasn’t too obscure, because then there wouldn’t be enough material for all the research papers we were to write in this course.
Jane Austen fans will recognize the title of Sleath’s most famous book, Orphan of the Rhine, which Austen mentions in Northanger Abbey. For quite some time scholars believed Austen made up the titles. She didn’t. All of them have been located, with Sleath’s book the very last to be found. The account of that is actually rather exciting.
The other exciting thing is that in the course of that research, I discovered what no one else knew; that Eleanor Sleath was a wealthy widow who married Reverend John Dudley under rather scandalous circumstances. The really silly thing is that I should have written a paper on this discovery since, actually, I think there are now only three people who know Sleath’s biography; me, the English historian who was researching Dudley, and a professor I happened to be corresponding with on the subject of Regency era novels. But I was working full time, going to grad school, parenting a soccer playing son who was young enough at the time to need more attention than he does now at 13, and writing novels. Frankly, I was a bit overwhelmed. I did not have it in me to write the paper on top of everything else.
So, after that lengthy digression, in the course of my Sleath research project I learned an absolutely astonishing amount about publishing in the Regency. The economies, I was surprised to discover, are not vastly different from today. My heroine, as the wife of a man who is spending all her money as fast as he can, takes to writing in secret in order to have some money to pay the bills. This research informs a great deal of the backstory in Scandal.
Q. What is it about the Regency period that interests you as a writer?
Larger than life characters like Byron, Mary Wollstonecraft and too many others to name. The period is a transitional one, in my opinion anyway, sandwiched as it is between the Georgian period and the far more stultified Victorian era (which probably wasn’t quite as stultified as the stereotype). It is in the Regency that we see so many of the events that drove the Reform movement and, ironically, and ultimately, led to the decline of the aristocracy Regency authors so love to write about.
Q. What do you think is the greatest creative risk you’ve taken in this book? How do you feel about it?
My philosophy is to risk everything in every book. There is no point in holding back. Alas, I have varying degrees of success with this, which I sometimes don’t see (or not see) until long after it’s too late to fix things.
I am a character driven author, which means my stories develop from my characters. The risks, therefore, tend to derive from them and what they are bringing to the story that unfolds as I panic that everything completely reeks of failure and I’ll never ever pull it off.
Q. Is there anything you wanted to include in the book that you (or your CPs or editor) felt was too controversial and left out?
No. It’s happened in other books, but not this one.
Q. What are you working on next?
I just turned in another historical, Indiscreet, which will be out from Berkley Sensation in October 2009. Right now, I’m –shudder– writing proposals for more paranormal romances. Very soon, I imagine, I will be writing a proposal or two for more historicals, too.
Q. Is there anything else you would like readers to know about you or your books?
Can we just skip this question? I am too boring to answer it.
Thanks, Carolyn, for joining us here today. Comment to get a chance to win a copy of Scandal.
Unless you’ve been living in an obscure cave you’ll know that today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of President Lincoln. I wanted to tell you about a touching memorial to him in Manchester, UK.
This statue bears the inscription:
This statue commemorates the support that the working people of Manchester gave in the fight for the abolition of slavery during the American Civil War. By supporting the Union under President Lincoln at a time when there was an economic blockade of the southern states the Lancashire cotton workers were denied access to raw cotton which caused considerable unemployment throughout the cotton industry…
Technically, Britain was neutral during the Civil War, but Liverpool, the port where the south’s cotton was unloaded, was a wholehearted supporter of the confederacy. The confederacy headquarters were in Rumford Place, where a US flag still flies.
In an 1863 letter to the “working men of Manchester,” Lincoln termed this action “an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age.”
The other big birthday today is that of Charles Darwin, born in the same year. His mother was a member of the Wedgwood family and the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell was an obscure cousin. Her last book, and one my favorites, Wives and Daughters, was published around the same time as The Origin of Species.
It’s possible that her portrayal of Roger Hamley, the nature-loving hero of the book, is based on her memories of Darwin as a young man:
He had gone about twenty yards on the small wood-path at right angles to the terrace, when, looking among the grass and wild plants under the trees, he spied out one which was rare, one which he had been long wishing to find in flower, and saw it at last, with those bright keen eyes of his. Down went his net, skilfully twisted so as to retain its contents, while it lay amid the herbage, and he himself went with light and well-planted footsteps in search of the treasure. He was so great a lover of nature that, without any thought, but habitually, he always avoided treading unnecessarily on any plant; who knew what long-sought growth or insect might develop itself in what now appeared but insignificant?
For Darwin Day celebrations, check out this site.
There are many Lincoln celebrations taking place across the US. Here’s the link to the Library of Congress’s With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition.
What are you doing today?
While Elena’s away, the members of the UK Historical Romance Blog bravely offered to cross the Atlantic and take over on a Wednesday–in fact, there are so many of them, and they’re such a talkative lot, they’ll be visiting again on March 4. So, a warm welcome ladies, and take it away…
Hi! It’s great to be here on the Risky Regencies blog. We’re a group of British Regency writers and we got together a few years ago to chat about our favourite genre. We run the Historical Romance UK blog so please drop by and visit us! And if you sign up for our monthly email newsletter, you can enter more competitions to win books and goodies. Just send a blank e-mail here and we’ll do the rest!
Ever since the Riskies invited us to blog we’ve been thinking about the differences between Regencies in the US and in the motherland, which largely depend on which publisher we’re with. Here are our thoughts, together with some information about us and our books, and of course there are plenty of competitions for you to enter, too! What better for February than some Regencies to win?! Unless otherwise stated, the closing date for our competitions on this Risky blog is 28th February.
Amanda Grange: I write a lot of Jane Austen inspired novels – Mr Darcy’s Diary, Mr Knightley’s Diary, Captain Wentworth’s Diary, Edmund Bertram’s Diary and Colonel Brandon’s Diary – which retell Jane Austen’s stories from the heroes’ point of view. This kind of book is very popular on both sides of the Atlantic, but the UK books tend to stay closer to Austen in style and tone. A lot of the US books take Jane Austen’s characters into new territory, exploring their sex lives, and giving them more dramatic storylines, whereas my books aim to be as close to Austen as I can get them. I particularly liked writing the backstories for Wentworth and Brandon, whereas the US books tend to focus more on continuations.
Visit Amanda’s website to enter a competition to win a hardback copy of Colonel Brandon’s Diary and a trade paperback of Lord Deverill’s Secret. Just email Amanda with the answer to these questions, which can be found on her site: What is the name of the heroine in Lord Deverill’s Secret? And what is the name of Colonel Brandon’s first love?
Jane Odiwe: It’s lovely to be invited over to the Risky Regencies Blog!I’m an English author with an American publisher, Sourcebooks Inc. and find my inspiration from the wonderful novels of Jane Austen. Lydia Bennet’s Story, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, appealed to me because I saw a challenge in developing a secondary character. I like the idea of telling the stories that Jane Austen didn’t relate and it was during a trip to Brighton that I started to wonder how Lydia and George Wickham came together before eloping. As I walked along the seafront I could imagine the balls and the promenades against the backdrop of fashion, scandal and frivolous living at the Marine Pavilion. I wanted to write a comic novel,and I thought with Lydia there would be plenty of opportunity for laughs.
Willoughby’s Return is my next sequel. I wanted to know how Marianne would fare in her marriage to the much older Colonel Brandon and how she might react if a former love, Mr Willoughby, returned to the neighbourhood. Margaret, another secondary character from Sense and Sensibility, is eighteen in this novel and I wanted to give her more of a heroine’s role,intertwining her story with that of her sister’s. Some of the story takes place in London with several of Austen’s characters like Mrs Jennings and Lucy Steele reappearing. I love to write scenes with these wonderfully humorous characters.
Having an American publisher means they are very open to scenes which Austen might not have written herself; and there are a range of sequels that Sourcebooks produce from those with no sex to the very steamy! My books have mild references to love-making and contain double entendres, but remain true to the Austen spirit. I am writing for a British and American audience, some of whom are Austen experts and some not, but I like to be meticulous in research and detail, reflecting the themes that Austen wrote about herself.
Monica Fairview: Yes, I think the expectations of Jane Austen fans in the US and the UK are quite different. I recently read a quote from Virginia Woolf which I loved. She says “anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware… that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.”
Of course, no one thinks that way today, but a hint of Jane Austen as untouchable still lingers in the UK. I think US Austen fans demand a lot, too, but they are willing to tolerate more creative licence.
My Austen-inspired novel, The Other Mr. Darcy, is coming out in June 2009 in the UK, and will be published later in the US by Sourcebooks. The Other Mr. Darcy deals with cross-cultural issues. It features an American main character along with the woman everyone loves to hate in Pride and Prejudice, Miss Caroline Bingley. My hero, Robert Darcy, is a Boston Brahmin, (though the term wasn’t used until after the Regency) so he has his own ideas of what constitutes a “gentleman.” Obviously his ideas are going to clash with Miss Bingley’s. I had great fun writing the novel, which I hope is in the spirit of Jane Austen, if not in the letter.
Louise Allen: my last book was the final title in my six part Those Scandalous Ravenhursts series, out along with numbers four and five this year. I thought I had got to grips with writing a series, but I soon discovered I had a lot to learn when I embarked on my current project – writing two stories as part of a, yet untitled, eight-part Regency continuity for HMB. My fellow authors for that project are Christine Merrill, Gayle Wilson and Julia Justiss from the States and Margaret McPhee and Annie Burroughs from the UK.
Thank goodness for email, is all I can say, I don’t know how we could have created all our intertwining plots and characters without it. I’m lucky enough to be close enough to London to go and check out oak trees in Hyde Park (for kissing behind) or whether a certain square is just right for someone’s hero’s town house while the others contribute fascinating research on Romany life and curses, Cornish smugglers, the American navy or keep our tangled stories straight.
It doesn’t matter which country you’re in, I’ve decided – historical romance writers are all sisters under the skin. My aim is to create heroes and heroines who will reach out to a 21st century reader while staying true to their Regency world: find out more at my website.
To win signed copies of the first 3 Ravenhurst titles e-mail me and tell me why you love Regencies to be entered into my prize draw. Passion… from the past into the present.
Amanda: I write other types of Regency as well as Austen inspired novels. Books like Lord Deverill’s Secret and Harstairs House are closer to Georgette Heyer in feel, with an adventure as well as a romance.
Lord Deverill’s Secret takes place in Brighton, with visits to the races and the Pavilion, and Harstairs House is set on the Cornish coast. I think the closest equivalent in the US would be the trad Regency, although US trads don’t seem to have as much adventure as the UK trads.
Jane Jackson: My books have never been traditional regencies – mainly because my stories are set in Cornwall – or at least begin there before travelling to countries served by the Packet Ships, and few young ladies would ever have managed to get to London for the Season. That said, Truro and Penzance had their own Assembly Rooms, their own circulating libraries and gentlemen’s clubs.
We had our own mini-Season here in Cornwall, where the daughters of the gentry would attend parties, balls and suppers with the express purpose of meeting eligible gentlemen. It was simply done on a smaller scale. My stories are adventure romance. We have such a rich and dramatic heritage here in Cornwall that I will run out of time before I run out of inspiration.
Visit Jane’s website to enter a competition to win a copy of either of my most recent books, Devil’s Prize or Bonded Heart (you choose). Just answer this question: What is the name of the village featured in both stories? Send your answer to me via the Get in Touch link on my website. Good Luck!
Kate Tremayne: Like Jane Jackson’s the Loveday series of novels are set in Cornwall where the family have their estate at Trevowan and a shipyard on an inlet of the River Fowey. Again they are not standard regencies as I am now writing book ten in the series that covers the lives, romances, conflicts, rivalry and adventures of four sets of Loveday cousins. The series has been reviewed as being a sweeping family drama in the tradition of Poldark with the mystery and suspense of Daphne du Maurier and an emotional intensity that transcends time. The novels weave through adventures and drama involving the French Revolution to the Napoleonic wars, smuggling, highway robbery, the criminal underworld and theatrical world of London, transportation to Botany Bay and a visit to Virginia involving a scandal involving their American kin.
Adam Loveday, the first book in the series, is rich in drama and passion, filled with memorable and feisty characters, with the atmosphere and flavour of Georgian England. The childhood rivalry between Adam and his elder twin St John continues to govern their fated passions and chequered fortunes. St John has become a dissolute wastrel but Adam, with a talent for ship design and a thirst for adventure, has fierce family pride in the family estate and yard. He will never accept St John as the rightful heir. St John is equally determined that Adam will never get his heart’s desire: the estate, the shipyard – and Meriel Sawle, the seductive daughter of the local innkeeper. whose violent family are infamous in the smuggling trade.
I can’t think of an American equivalent but if any of you know of something similar in the US, please let me know!
Visit Kate’s website to enter a competition to win a copy of Adam Loveday. Just email Kate with the answer to this question, which can be found on her site: What is the name of the Loveday estate in Cornwall?
Kate Allan: After writing Perfidy and Perfection, a Jane Austen inspired Regency rom com, I have been interested to see a handful of Regency rom coms appearing in the US and hope this is a trend that will continue. My other Regencies are all romantic adventures. I like setting my stories in different parts of the UK and making sure the local detail is correct as possible. One difference between Regencies published in the UK and those in the US is the level of historical realism that is required by publishers here. My next novel, which should be out at the end of this year, is set in Cornwall and the hero is a ex-smuggler back for revenge of those who betrayed him. It is a little darker in tone than my previous books. It is grey and raining throughout the whole novel and the sun only comes out at the very end.
Monica: Like Kate, I’m very fond of Regency romantic comedy. In my opinion, a comic touch is important to Regency. If you look at both Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, who laid the foundation for Regency romance, comedy is at the heart of both. I think of my novel An Improper Suitor as a comedy of manners, though it also has an element of suspense and adventure to it. Generally in the UK there is still a hearty tradition of adventure attached to Regency romances, following Heyer, whereas in the US there’s been a drift towards longer historicals that are more spicy and more relationship-focused.
Well, that’s all from us for now. We’ll be back again in March, when the rest of Historical Romance UK will be talking about their take on the similarities and differences between UK and US Regencies.
If you’d like to buy any of the UK published books and can’t find them in the US, The Book Depository delivers them free worldwide.